Washington, D.C. -- Congressional negotiators have approved a compromise version of a bill that would require colleges and universities to report both the graduation rates of their athletes and the number of crimes committed on their campuses.
College lobbyists said they were pleased with the final form of the bill. The legislation, they said, would make colleges and students more aware of campus-safety issues without imposing what college officials have said were onerous reporting requirements in earlier versions of the legislation.
Advocates of improved campus security also hailed the bill, saying it would help reduce crime on campuses and make colleges more accountable for safety on their property.
The bill is now expected to win quick approval by the full House of Representatives and Senate before Congress adjourns for the year. Several influential lawmakers, both Republicans and Democrats, have thrown their weight behind the measure, characterizing it as a consumer “right to know” bill for prospective college students.
Last week’s agreement was worked out between members of the Senate and House who were meeting to resolve differences between the two chambers’ versions of the bill.
The compromise bill would require colleges to publish annual reports that include both statistics on the incidence of crime on campuses and descriptions of campus policies for preventing crime. The reports would have to be made available, on request, to students, faculty and staff members, and applicants, as well as to parents of students and applicants.
In addition, the bill would require colleges to provide to any prospective athlete a report on the graduation rates for players on scholarships. Separate rates would have to be compiled for athletes in football, basketball, baseball, cross country and track, and all other sports combined. For football and baseball, the rates would have to be broken down by race. In the other categories, the rates would have to be broken down by race and sex.
In working out a compromise on the crime-reporting provision of the bill, the Congressional negotiators agreed to adopt the House bill’s more extensive list of crimes that must be reported by colleges. Under the legislation, institutions would have to release statistics on reported incidents of murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, and car theft, as well as on arrests for unlawful possession of weapons or violations of liquor and drug laws.
College lobbyists had been concerned about how the bill would define “campus” in the requirement for reporting campus crime. The lobbyists said they were pleased that negotiators had adopted the more precise definition that had been included in the House version of the bill.
Under the compromise bill a college must report crimes or arrests that take place at any building or property owned or controlled by the college and “within the same reasonably contiguous geographic area and used by the institution in direct support of, or related to, its educational purpose.” The reporting requirement extends as well to any building owned by a college-recognized student organization.
Colleges must begin compiling data on September 1, 1991, and publish their first reports by September 1, 1992. The House bill would have required the first reports next year, but negotiators agreed to adopt the later date in the Senate bill. College lobbyists had supported the later date, saying it would give institutions time to work out ways to compile the numbers and would also give lawmakers an opportunity to review the crime-reporting requirements thoroughly when Congress reauthorizes the Higher Education Act next year.
Kathleen Curry Santora, executive director for operations of the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, said the campus-safety provisions of the bill would “make colleges more aware of the public’s concern about public safety” and provide valuable information to students. She said, however, that providing statistics was “not the most effective way to reduce crime on campus” and that data would not necessarily provide an accurate picture of the level of safety on a given campus.
The legislation would also require the Education Department to study the usefulness and feasibility of compiling figures on:
* Graduation rates broken down by academic discipline.
* Job-placement and job-certification rates for students.
* Revenue from and spending on athletics programs.
The compromise bill also contained a provision that would cancel existing requirements for reporting job-placement and job-certification rates of students from two-year institutions and vocational schools. The requirements were instituted last year as part of a measure to reduce student-loan defaults. Community-college officials complained that the requirements were unreasonable and impractical, and they staged an extensive lobbying effort to have them rescinded.